Mateo Arquitectura Starts Construction of Andromède Housing Blocks in Toulouse

Construction work will shortly begin of the Mateo Arquitectura-designed housing blocks in the Andromède district of Toulouse, France, near the airport of Toulouse-Blagnac. 

Project Description from the Architects:

The site is ready for construction work, which will last 18 months. The project consists of four volumes built around a central garden that will house 104 dwellings, each with a terrace or balcony.

The four buildings share a car-parking floor, which has a waterproofing system to prevent future leakage, as this is a wetland area.

Three of the four blocks are built with brickwork lattice, presenting a harder appearance, and the fourth is built with wood, establishing a contrast with the others.

The underlying premiss of the project is to give the apartments the best orientation, in all cases avoiding the north. Accordingly, all the dwellings in the block on the north side of the site, whether crossventilated or corner apartments, have a double orientation.

The building on the north side is the hardest, built with 80% of black materials and 20% of white materials, thereby marking the urban area, which starts with Avenue Andromède. On the central plot, the proportion is inverted (80% white and 20% black) in a tendency to a shiny white that reflects the vegetation in the garden. The third volume on Rue Jacqueline Auriol is grey (50% black, 50% white). The resulting volumes will be lightweight, perceived not as a continuity of colour but as clouds of pixels, a collection of dots that form a volume.